#roche.

"H-hey...You alright?" Roche’s sniffs are not entirely surreptitious. Zack can hear the distinct ‘hff hff hffff’ when Roche draws in breath through his nose. As deep and as slow as a diver preparing to submerge themselves into a pool of water.

Breathe in. 

Hold your breath. 

Release.

Rise to the surface.

True, they haven’t exactly emerged from the best of straits. Zack shoves away a fallen wooden beam, splintered at the end into countless tiny, sharp points, with a solid kick of his boot as he tightens an arm around Roche’s waist and scoots them back away from the collapsed end of the hallway and the flames crawling up the walls. Rather than let them proceed farther into the fortress, the Wutaian officers charged with the defense of one of Godo’s lesser castles had started blowing up the main hallways that led into the heart of the castle. The structure was one of Wutai’s oldest holdings, built with a combination of native woods and stone rather than modern methods that incorporated steel and concrete. 

Much of Wutai feels like a time capsule, evidenced by the many traditions still exercised by its peoples and villages and towns that probably look no different today than they did in decades past.

Adrenaline tremors through his arms and shaky breaths pulled between his teeth. 

“I probably don’t smell too great,” he laughs. Exertion, ashy, pulverized stone and scattered sawdust. His ears are still ringing from the blast. Zack slides his arm up along Roche’s back, patting between his shoulders with an audible ‘pap pap.’ “C’mon, let’s get up. Try to…” Zack huffs out a breath. C’mon, stop shaking, stop shaking. “Try to keep moving. Complete the mission.” 

Through hellfire and brimstone, apparently. 

Every inch of ground they can claim is critical to the war effort, or so they have been told. Told, and expected to believe. Without question. Without faltering. Setting his jaw, Zack pulls Roche up with him and staggers to his feet. 

Can’t look rattled, not when he has people relying on him. Zack uses the back of his hand to wipe away the soot smudging his cheek and grins at Roche.

“Have you considered getting off the ride?” Cloud asks, a growl roughing at the edges of his question as the rear wheel squeals and wobbles underneath the sudden additional weight at the back of his bike. 

This isn’t the first time their paths have crossed, but it’s a first for him to encounter someone fucking crazy enough to leap off some ledge Planet knows where onto a moving bike streaking through Midgar’s arterial expressway. He barely had time to brace and steady his mount by the time he registered Roche’s shadow dropping down overhead with a deranged peal of laughter. The only thing that stops Cloud from taking a swing at Roche with the Buster Sword is the fact that the SOLDIER perched behind him hasn’t drawn his own weapon.

Roche seems more interested in play as opposed to fight…or doing his job in any capacity for that matter, and perhaps that puzzles Cloud most of all. Satisfied with his threat assessment, Cloud’s nose wrinkles as he looks down and to the side in the gap under his arm where he can see Roche crouched along the curved, stiff shell of the fender behind the pillion seat with a slaphappy grin. 

“Tch. Whatever. I’m not responsible if you fall off.”

Running additional errands for Tifa keeps him productive and pulling in additional gil between Avalanche’s bombing missions can’t hurt. Gil is gil.

The city can be their playground, even as the crowds thin, as curtains draw, doors shutter, and shopkeepers sweep off their doorsteps. Dark alleyways and empty phone booths, lonely cafe tables, and neat rows of televisions behind glass walls. Blue light and nightly news, streaming off the shelves as the silhouettes of two SOLDIERs pass the storefront. At regular intervals, fork-necked street lights illuminate the way down through Sector Eight and reflect off glossy stones and brushed metal surfaces in warm, brassy tones. 

They are both in uniform. Neatly starched pants, bloused at the bottom, boot-heel click along the sidewalk as the two men move in-sync down the cobblestone avenue. The very picture of a handsome propaganda poster extolling the majesty and heroism of Shinra’s first line of defense against nefarious Wutain villains that would seek to disturb good peoples’ way of life.

A pair of SOLDIERs; imposing, deadly– unless anyone watching on actually bothers to listen to what they are saying.

“Puh-lease,” Zack loads all his doubt on the second syllable and glances at Roche with a vehemently unconvinced shake of his head. "I've been climbing trees and cliffs since I could walk. How hard could it be to climb around in Midgar?" 

Contrary to what most amateurs may think, climbing is all in the legs. To reach the greatest heights, to grapple against gravity, pushing off with your legs instead of constantly wasting energy trying to pull yourself up over ledges is the only way to go. The same principles ought to apply even if the jungle is a concrete one instead of an organic one. 

He eyes a nearby fire escape in the partially water-logged alleyway next to them as they walk past the gurgling fountain at the heart of Loveless Avenue. The lowest rung of the copper-rust colored ladder hangs about six, maybe eight feet off the ground. Easy for any SOLDIER to hop up and latch onto. The trick is jumping up onto the drop ladder without releasing the hook that keeps it in its track. 

Zack may or may not have discovered what it feels like to slide down an ill-maintained ladder with a tooth-rattling jolt in his earlier ventures onto Midgar rooftops. 

"What'd ya call it– parkour? Piece a cake. Let's do it!” He balls his hands into fists, peppers the air with quick jabs. “Parkour our asses all the way back to HQ."

Off-duty SOLDIERs are a dangerous lot. Especially ones that easily bore. Especially ones that are inclined to make up competitions over nothing in particular. The proposal is not a suggestion, because Zack has already sprung off the path to take a running start, coil, leap, grab and curl mid-air to get both hands and feet onto the ladder rungs. 

The metal beneath his fingers and boot tread vibrates from the force of his landing. But it holds. 

Up he goes, scrambling onto the platform with exaggerated haste. Zack turns long enough to give Roche a cheeky two-fingered salute before taking the steps up two at a time in a sprint to the roof. 

Cloud feels his eye twitch as he brings up his sword to ward away flying sparks. Too bad it doesn’t block out the manic sound of the other man’s laughter as he skids past on his fire-engine red monstrosity of a bike.

What the hell’s up with this guy? He’s...crazy...

Maybe that had been a miss. A kiss for the wrong target, given that there are clearly better ones around. He glances over at Jessie, but she just shrugs helplessly at him.

“Think he meant you, big boy.”

“Wasn’t asking.”

“Totally were.”

 Cloud makes an irritated ‘tsk’ sound by sucking on the back of his teeth. For once, he’d be perfectly content to carry on this argument if it meant he didn’t have to acknowledge Roche. The SOLDIER seems on the verge of wolf whistling at him to reacquire Cloud’s attention once more. That’s a scenario he wants to avoid.

"Like it? Not really my style, but-" he admits, putting on more pressure and forcing them to spin in place, Roche's height advantage leading the blonde by the nose during their fight.

"-made me think about you, Spitfire."

A manic grin that all teeth and impulse at the wheel, but he employs the barest modicum of self-control. Wouldn't want to put an end to their little tryst so quickly.

Cocking his head to the side, his eyes sear a slow and heavy trail down the length of Strife's body, his figure's svelte and tightly compacted muscle, snake-like in that steel was deceptively masked by a smooth and supple layer of healthy skin. He was built for speed along with power, which is exactly Roche's type.

When Cloud jumps back he knows what's coming, just narrowly evading that massive slab of alloy chopping a limb clean off. The concrete shatters where he had been standing, Roche having spun out of the way and was currently using his momentum come in hot and slide an arm around his partner's waist.

He throws his head back and laughs, peals of it echoing off of scrap steel and rumbling through his broad chest. Leaning back and stabilizing himself against his left leg as it pivots, he forces Cloud into a kind of reverse dip, his smaller frame having nowhere to go but against Gallo's larger torso.

"You love it when I punch your dance card, don't you? Do I make your engine roar, baby?" he purrs, smirking as the blonde struggles to regain his footing. Cloud looks like he's ready to drop the sword and just strangle him to death.

Good.

"Keep those baby-blues on me, Gorgeous. Only me," he murmurs into blonde's neck, lips pulling back into another rakish smile before giving the lobe of Cloud's ear a gentle tug with his teeth.

Cloud wants to believe that Roche’s incessant flirting is part of a grand strategy to disarm him in some way. As far as strategies go, it’s not a terrible one. Use pure shock value to catch your opponent off guard, then cut him down when he’s distracted. Or most likely, Roche must have an insatiable urge to run his mouth. Just like Cloud has an insatiable urge to gouge out the other man’s eyes when he realizes that Roche is not in fact assessing him, but undressing him with his eyes.

“Don’t. Normal people use magazines or some shit,” Cloud growls. He leans his weight back on his heels into a spin that comes up too slow: the battered edge of the Buster Sword catches only concrete. Worse still, the wide arc that his sword cuts into the air leaves him wide open. Not enough time to recover or stop the momentum of his own swing–

No, no no—!

Contact.

Winded, a lovely epithet cursing Roche’s ancestors dies on his lips. In fact, the ability to string together a coherent sentence becomes an altogether impossible task when he feels the SOLDIER’s breath gust hotly against his neck.

Motor oil and musk, the exact shade of blue of his eyes, the prickle of goatee against his skin; all in the span of a few seconds. Too many details. Way too many.

Cloud can barely feel the muscles in his own face other than the heated mask of a blush that stretches from his cheeks all the way down past his neck. The Buster Sword slips from his hands and drops to the asphalt like a two-ton weight in favor of allowing Cloud to scramble upright and make a straight lunge for Roche’s throat. 

SOLDIER, infantry, and general office staff alike knew when to give the self-proclaimed Speed Demon a very wide berth, and no time was there quite like now, as he would trudge through the 49th floor, a wild glint to his eye, and looking for one Zack Fair.

Roche didn’t need to ask the inevitable questions, word enough from the pretty receptionist down in the foyer as she would gush and fawn to her desk-mate over his raven-haired superior was all the Third needed to understand this particular SOLDIER was on-site. And he knew exactly where to find this sneak thief. 

The training simulator. 

There were no room for common courtesies, not when there were answers to be had, and so the blond would barge through that door like a bulldozer on a mission, to find the man in the full throws of his latest little gaming session. Thick soles would squeak against the metalic floor as he would stomp towards the control panel and mashed his fist into the bright red  button which would bring Zack Fair’s fictional little world crashing down about his very eyes. He hit the thing so hard, in fact, he would surprise himself later that he didn't shove his hand right through the panel itself...

Though at least Roche would wait - still dressed in his usual oil stained attire adorned down in the bowels of the maintenance workshops - until Zack would remove his visor before fixing him with a belligerent glare only accentuated via the way in which he would shake the now empty toolbox - which had once housed a plethora of snacks and treats collected and archived over a vast period of week - in the Second's general direction.

“You have five seconds to explain this to me, Fair…” Roche was certainly not impressed, indicated at least within the dark, low drone of his tone, and an unimpressed Roche is often a rather flighty and dangerous one… 

“... think quickly now!”

An abrupt end to any simulation is jarring. Swoosh, like having the ground dropping away beneath his feet to join the wild flip flopping of his stomach when suddenly introduced to the sensation of freefall in the dithering pixels of darkness between virtual reality and the blank feed of his headset in the real world.

 “Uh…” Zack inclines his head in the direction of the voice of a man who has clearly found his prey. His eyes flit down to the empty toolbox hanging from Roche’s hand, then back up to Roche himself and his darkening, ominous expression. 

The seconds tick by and Zack’s mouth hangs open. No sound comes out, despite his want for it. 

“Uhhhhh….” Longer this time, more drawn out as Zack carefully, slowly edges away from Roche’s approach like a cornered animal while pushing up his visor with one hand to peek out at Roche beneath its lip. “I can explain.”

‘You have crappy taste in snacks’ probably isn’t a very good opening statement. In all honesty– Zack had meant well. The absence of Roche’s hoard of sundries, sweet and savory, were orchestrated with good intentions. Replace the hotel lobby, doctor’s waiting room, and tacky gift counter-standard candies with the good stuff and let his dear friend reap the benefits of enjoying real treats while he tinkered away in the workshop. Zack merely forgot about the most critical step in that plan. 

Like replacing the actual snacks. 

Distractions are distractions, and he is more than happy to indulge at Roche’s behest.

“YeeeAAAAH!” Zack throws his hands up in the air in a victory sign for whatever security cameras might have been pointing at them that very moment. They are moving at speed, breakneck down the multi-lane road. Just enough for him to feel the sting of tears in the corners of his eyes.

Leaning down to press one palm flat on the hood of Sleipnir’s engine housing, he shifts center of gravity, nimble and flexible, lifting from crouch to a one-handed handstand while they hurtle down the expressway connecting Sector Seven and Sector Eight. The perfect spot for a little drama, where theater goers can gawk at them out the tinted windows of their limousines on their way to the night’s showing of LOVELESS.

“Hey! Hah! Ho!”

Swapping hands, left, right, left, right. Airborne, clapping his hands together before landing with both hands planted firmly on freshly waxed paint. Zack’s performance is nigh flawless as Roche swerves wildly through traffic. Perfect point of balance, accounting for every jostle and brake-jerk-sway as Sleipnir’s rider finds the surest path through the sea of tail lights as cleanly and quickly as needle and thread in a seamstress’s hand.

Reckless, pure showboating (showbiking, in this case). A demonstration of the superhuman feat that SOLDIERs are capable of.

Not that life always goes the way they expect.

Zack barely has time to glimpse the spiraling flutter of a stray plastic bag whipped up by the wheels on the road before it smacks straight into his face and he panics, briefly asphyxiated, “Mmmfgghh-- AHHH!” and pushes off Sleipnir’s chassis. Bent-arm spring, backwards over Roche’s head before Zack reaches out, hooks in. Life flashing before his eyes, Zack winds his arms around Roche’s head to grab his own shoulders and clamps his legs, ankles crossed, around Roche’s waist like a quivering cat latching on for dear life.

"Fat chance." Nothing on the Planet could dampen his skepticism.  What does a man obsessed with the thrill of the chase know what to do with his prize when he's finally got it? He cannot fathom what bizarre delusions live inside Roche's brain other than the fact that Roche will. Not. Leave. Him. Alone.

Cloud tightens his grip around the handle of his sword, keeping the point of the weapon between them. The blade that Roche left behind during their last encounter retained a surprisingly sharp edge. Well-balanced, clean profile. High carbide steel. Nothing like the standard, mass-manufactured blades that Shinra dispensed in their supply pods.

He isn't going so far as to approach the words 'good taste,' especially when he's certain that Roche will crow endlessly about it if Cloud so much as hinted at approval.

Roche is fearless. Not in a good way.

Showing killing intent has been no more effective of a strategy than trying to scare away a hungry dog with a rolled up newspaper.

There are people staring at them on their way to the Sector Seven station, yet Cloud finds himself unable (unwilling) to lower his guard. He can feel their curious glances weighing him down even as they move along the fringes and follow the chain link fencing outside the Talagger Factory towards the station platform. Close enough to observe, not so close that they might get swept up in any of the potential violence.

Begrudgingly, and as if it causes him a great deal of pain to do so, Cloud slowly drops the point of his weapon. Somewhat. 

“Don’t you have any damn other hobbies?” Cloud takes a step back. Then another, eyes narrowed, trying to judge how much space he can put between them before Roche decides to invade his personal space for no other reason than to further torment him.